Kev Lambert publishes his fourth novel, Snow Trails

Nearly a year after receiving the Medici Prize for May our joy remainthe Quebec author now known as Kev Lambert published his fourth novel on Wednesday, Snow trails. Camped in the Lac-Saint-Jean of his childhood during the holiday season, the book addresses the question of transidentity within a family that does not yet know how to name it.

If the author chose to abbreviate his birth name, Kevin Lambert, to sign his new novel, it is to better represent the period of exploration he is going through in relation to his gender identity.

I find that it is a name that is more gender neutral and I don’t feel comfortable in the very defined categories, masculine or feminine. Kev, I find it very ambiguous and I like ithe explains.

Gender fluidity and transidentity are also themes at the heart of Snow trailseven if they are not expressly named. It’s about a child who is considered a boy by those around him, but who at certain moments starts to think of “she”, to imagine himself as a princess who rides a horse, because he reads books like Thathe summarizes.

A family and its unsaid things

Inspired in part by Kev Lambert’s childhood, Snow trails tells the story of Zoey, an 8-year-old boy, during his first Christmas celebrations after his parents separated, on December 24 at his father’s in Lac-Saint-Jean and then at his mother’s.

Behind the bursts of laughter and heated conversations at family gatherings lies a muted homophobia typical of the early 2000s, according to Kev Lambert. I grew up in an era where “gay” was the adjective used to say that something was bad,” he explains. We didn’t like a film and we said: “Ah, that film is gay.”

What interests me is the way in which it can be experienced for a child like that who is in a family where it is not named at all.

Although he allows himself a certain criticism of the family, Kev Lambert affirms that his book is also a celebration of the magical moments associated with the holiday season, with uncles, aunts and cousins.

I wanted to show the side that can be brutal for children, […] but I also wanted to show how these are people who are larger than life, who are funny, who are a little crazy too. […] It’s always the ambivalences that interest me, the sometimes incredible, extraordinary, sometimes brutal, violent aspect.

With information from Louis-Philippe Ouimet